


Pass it Around

by coldfiredragon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, I haven't betaed this yet., M/M, Mentions of canon character death, Theme- Friendship, Week Two, the welters challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 13:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11253978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/pseuds/coldfiredragon
Summary: A single item can hold a million memories, especially when it goes full cirlce as the years pass.





	Pass it Around

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for week two of the Welter's Challenge on Tumblr. Theme Friendship. 
> 
> I haven't gotten to fully beta this yet, but I'm not sure I'll get home in time to post it if I don't post it before I leave for work.

The light gray blanket is a birthday present from Julia before he leaves for Columbia in the fall. It's not the most exciting present, but it's soft when the school provided pack of bedding he buys as part of his housing costs is scratchy and cheap. The sheets and pillowcases get replaced with softer cotton ones within the first month, but Julia's blanket stays. They use it whenever she comes over to watch movies, and he lets her have it when they get too drunk and she falls asleep on the floor. It holds her perfume for days after, sometimes even after he's washed it. 

The smell helps when he sinks the lowest into depression, when all he does is lay in bed for days with that blanket draped over his head. The smell becomes a small connection to the world and a tiny reminder that he has a friend or two who hasn't turned his back on him. 

He and Julia room together for a year during their junior year of college and the blanket becomes a permanent fixture on the couch in their living room. They joke about having shared custody of it, and whose turn it is to have it for the weekend. Despite all the jokes it remains Quentin's blanket, and they decide he's going to keep it when Julia decides she's going to move in with James. 

After his senior year ends and he starts looking for grad school programs the pressure starts to mount and he check himself into the hospital. The blankets they have are stiff and sterile, and they smell like the industrial soap of the hospital laundry. He's relieved when his doctor agrees to release him for his grad school interview and he spends the evening of their last party closed up in his room with his books and blankets, then Julia invades his space and they lay together and Quentin wonders when it became okay to lie to her about his mental health. She tells him she called, he tells her he went to his dad's and all she has to do is look to her left to see the pill bottle. 

She knows he's lying, and maybe that's what makes her a friend he can trust, because she doesn't question that his brain breaks. They lie together, and they talk, and smile, and then James joins them and the bed breaks as people pile onto it and Quentin can't help but laugh. Its the last time they all laugh together because the next day is his faculty interview and he follows a loose leaf of paper through a thicket and a hedge row. Magic changes the dynamic he has with James and Julia forever, and he finds new friends when Eliot drags Margo into his dorm. Apparently he'd made a good impression when he'd clue-lessly stumbled onto campus. 

The blanket arrives along with the rest of his things when they show up in his new room, and he freaks out a little when he finds Penny using it without permission. 'It's fucking freezing in here.' is the psychic's reaction when he complains, and it is cold in their room, but it's still not a reason for Penny to go through his stuff. They aren't friends, hell they barely tolerate one another! Penny must see fragments of his memory, because he hands the blanket back and actually looks apologetic. 'I didn't know it was a thing'. He says at the time. 

Quentin hesitates to call Julia and James false friends but the way Eliot embraces his depression is so different from the way they had handled it. Julia and James had tolerated his unpredictable mood swings, and they had rarely complained. There had been moments though, especially when Quentin would cancel on their plans at the last minute, that their irritation had flared. 

Eliot just shrugs and rolls with it. Every single person on the Brakebills campus has some kind of issue. His depression isn't special. Eliot hands him a cocktail and makes a new one for himself. 'Everybody here medicates somehow.' He tells Quentin later that evening as the two of them sit outside on the grass. Quentin plays with a loose gray thread as he mulls over the revelation, then Margo shows up with enough wine glasses for the three of them and together they kill a bottle of Merlot. 

When Quentin contacts James and finds out that Julia is going off the deep end they offer to accompany him off campus. They are drunk and giggly while he argues with Julia and tries to convince her that she doesn't have to be a master of everything. They don't argue when he tells them they're leaving the birthday party he'd come to attend, but they sense that something is wrong, because they sober up faster than he thought possible and take him to another bar. 

Quentin likes Alice, and her abilities impress the shit out of him, but he can't quite shake that they are being pushed together by unseen forces. He agrees to help her contact her brother regardless. He wishes they didn't need Kady and Penny to do it, and when nothing happens he isn't really surprised. The bad chemistry between the four of them had probably fucked up the spell. 

The next day is a nightmare, between being frozen to his chair, and the questioning by Sunderland that followed he just knows they are going to get caught, but when they are finally allowed to leave Eliot is waiting for them. Quentin gets swept under the older student's arm and off to the cottage. They drink and Quentin tells him everything. They talk out loud about his hospital stays, and Eliot's telekinesis. Eliot's words about not being alone as long as he's at Brakebills ring both true and hollow. He has to allowed to stay at the school to belong there. 

Penny almost screws everything up, and Quentin doesn't understand why he's the only one punished. Telling Eliot he is getting expelled is the worst thing in the world, and the older boy seems equally disturbed by the turn of events. Quentin thinks he might have found someone to match and surpass his friendship with Julia. A part of him believes that Eliot might actually keep his promise to find him and lift his spirits. 

With everything on the line Quentin doesn't feel bad about attacking Penny, or for stealing the crystal that might save his ass. Eliza surprises him by not making him use it and he heads straight for the cottage as soon as he's released. Seeing Eliot and Margo on the patio makes something warm blossom inside his chest.

Finding out a few days later that he gets to live in the cottage despite not having a discipline is on par with the moment in the dean's office when he used magic for the first time. All his friends live in the cottage. Eliot and Margo, and now Alice as well, and Quentin feels a sense of belonging that he'd only found in rare moments with Julia and James. The first nights there blend together in endless parties, but then two things happen almost simultaneously. He and Eliot discover that Julia's become a hedge witch and Alice leaves school after Quentin boxes her brother.

The loss of both women hits Quentin hard, and he leans into Eliot, and alcohol to numb the loss. They stay up till almost 5 the Friday after Alice leaves. Quentin has the gray blanket wrapped around him, and Eliot's arm eventually ends up curled around his shoulder. The next night he gets incepted and he wakes up on the couch in the cottage with a professor and the Dean hovering over him. He sees Julia and he knows, deep in his gut, that she wouldn't be there or look so guilty if she hadn't been partially responsible for the waking nightmare. The furious glances Eliot and Penny give her confirms the theory. She's gone before he can question her and Eliot is tossing his blanket into his lap and settling in beside him as he shivers. They take turns sipping whiskey from Eliot's flask until Quentin feels warm and falls asleep. 

He isn't sure how Eliot manages it, but they wake up together in his bed, the blanket draped around both of them. The other man's cologne grounds him when his mind questions the reality and Quentin rolls tighter into his hold. Quentin has a glimmer of an idea that they can easily become something more, but he's too exhausted to explore it in that moment and goes back to sleep.

Alice returns to school, and he receives word of his father's cancer before Quentin can figure out the best move to make to see if Eliot wants something more than friendship. He barely has time to start grieving before the trials begin and any hope of romance gets sidelined when his class flies to Brakebills South. He and Alice sleep together, and while the lust is there Quentin can't quite shake the idea that there's a more organic relationship waiting for him when they get home. 

Eliot is dating Mike when they get back, and Margo is in Spain, and Alice wants space. Quentin retreats to his room with his blanket and his books. He's missed the well worn pages filled with the adventures of the Chatwin children. There hadn't been copies in the Brakebills South library so it feels like he's embracing old friends. The only problem with retreating to his room is that Eliot had been using the blanket in his absence. His cologne clings to so strongly that it smells like a full bottle of the stuff has been dumped onto it. 

The weeks that follow aren't the same as the first months. Quentin isn't going to push Alice, and Eliot is preoccupied with Mike. Their classes become the focus of everyone's attention and life takes another absurd twist when Penny of all people saves his life. Eliza dies before Quentin can get an explanation from her. Eliot free-falls into his addictions, and Alice suddenly drops her ice queen act. If Quentin wasn't so concerned with how hard Eliot is falling he might have been glad for Alice's attention. 

Two nights pass without Margo's return and Eliot locks himself in his room, and Quentin sees the isolation from someone as social as Eliot as a red flag. He folds the blanket under his arm, grabs a bottle of tequila and heads upstairs. The lock clicks after ten minutes of persistent tapping and Quentin let himself into the darkened space. Eliot doesn't move as Quentin drapes the blanket across his prone form then sits beside him. Silence hangs between them until Eliot curls closer. Body shaking sobs shudder through him and Quentin reaches down to gently push his hand through Eliot's hair.

Quentin eventually lays down beside him. He doesn't make Eliot talk, but he knows there is more wrong than just Mike's betrayal and death. They wake up together, tucked together under the blanket, and Eliot's hands curl into his hair before Quentin can do more than blink awake. It's a desperate kiss Quentin doesn't feel like Eliot should be giving considering what happened to Mike. When Eliot tells him the truth it's Quentin who kisses Eliot. It's the second time in a week that one of his friends has put their life on the line for him. He doesn't understand how he came to mean the world to any of these people.

When Penny is finally released from the infirmary, and they all sit down to talk Penny reveals that he'd taken Quentin's manuscript. He tells all of them what he can remember and the four of them go to England. Finding the button is small consolation when they have to desecrate a child's grave to get it. 

Alice takes what they find the worst, because she can't accept that there's nothing they can do for the ghosts. Quentin is simply stunned that his hero was a child molester. Eliot brings them both double shots of scotch and Quentin hands Alice the blanket before settling against her. He wraps himself around her, then Eliot wraps around him, and they sit together in quiet shell shock until Margo finally gets home and crawls into Eliot's lap.

The next morning the five of them sit in the living and stare at the button. Penny touches it despite everyone suggesting that he not and they spend weeks wondering if he's actually dead before Penny appears in Quentin's dreams. Finding a way to get the other man home feels like a good way to repay Penny for saving his life. He goes with Alice to talk to the traveler her parents know and Quentin can't help but blush when he tells Eliot about the sex magic spell. The mirth that lights up Eliot's eyes before he kisses him and drags him up to his bedroom is the most at ease Quentin has seen him since Mike. 

The probability spell they perform to try and decide what to do about the Beast breaks all of them in their own ways and they turn to Kady, and Julia, and battle magic. The emotion bottles Kady gives them are the worst possible solution for people with their emotional issues. It sends Quentin's depression into overdrive and Eliot drinks himself into a stupor. The two of them lay in Quentin's bed physically, emotionally, and mentally spent. Then Margo crawls in with them and they wake up naked in a mess of tangled limbs. The blanket somehow stretches to cover all three of them where it counts and Quentin notices how it's starting to show it's age. 

He doesn't take it with him when they go to Fillory, but its the first thing he finds to take back with him when he and Margo come home to gather a few of Eliot's things. Quentin still hasn't adjusted to the hole that's been torn in his heart by Eliot's unexpected marriage. Giving Eliot a piece of home, when he's never going to come home again, feels like a small sacrifice when compared to everything Eliot's given up. The idea of Fen touching the well worn cloth makes him pause, but he leaves it on the bed of Eliot's suite in Fillory regardless.

The next time he sees it is when it's bunched around Eliot's waist as he lays unconscious following the bank heist. With Eliot unresponsive, Alice's niffin screaming in his head, and Julia's shade gone he sinks down along the edge of the bed and fists his hand in the corner of the coverlet. Margo's arms wrap around him and he cries into her shoulder as he laments his failure to protect all of them. 

They get Eliot back, but he has to let Alice go, and Quentin has to fight down righteous anger when he finds out about Idri. If Eliot's marrying another man by all rights it should be him. They fight about it. How can they not? Eliot's his best friend, the love of his life, and he's tying himself into a second Fillorian marriage contract, not for love, but to stop a war. Eliot vents that maybe if he'd taken his role as king more seriously none of it would have happened. Quentin tries to sway Margo to his side but she's distracted by gods know what and Quentin wishes he'd let Alice go sooner so he could have spent more time in Fillory. 

Giving the button to the dragon to help Julia is something he'll regret for the rest of his life, because he'll never go home again and they see Alice's shade in the Underworld. Julia almost moves to take the girl with them but Quentin grabs her wrist and squeezes it, and tells her no. Dragging Alice back to the living is impossible and he knows Alice. She would hate him. They go back to Earth, and Quentin goes back to his classes. Fillory is lost to him without the button. Eliot and Margo with it. Alice is gone, Penny is tied to the library, and Julia is so overcome with grief that she doesn't leave her apartment. 

Quentin has to take his pills in the absence of his friends. He's sitting in the common room of the cottage when Eliot drops onto the floor from thin air. They stare at one another in silence. The fight still hangs between them. Eliot lunges at him and Quentin expects to get punched, not kissed. His fingers shake and slip against the button's of Eliot's jacket. Neither of them care that they're in the common room as they strip each others clothes. It's been months since they've been allowed to touch one another and Quentin will be damned if he wastes one second of how ever little time they have.

By the time the two of them track down Umber for the first time in his life, Quentin is sick of all things Fillory. He's going to save it, but he's sick of it taking the beautiful things in his life and twisting them. He's sick of losing the people he loves most to it, because Eliot's contract with Idri still needs to stand to avoid the war, even if he's free from the one with Fen. 

He and Julia spend the night after they've killed Ember in Whitespire. He and Eliot share Eliot's bed and Alice's niffin appears to them as they lay together in quiet silence. She tells them there will be consequences, she berates him for his stupidity. Gods have parents too. She says before disappearing again in a flash of blue light. 

A few days later they lose magic and the four of them sit in Eliot's suite as they drink and lament the loss. Julia's hands brush over the soft worn cloth of the blanket. 'I can't believe you've kept this all these years.' She tells him in awe. Quentin gives her a weak and leans into Eliot's hold. Their group of friends feels weakened by everything they've been through but Quentin knows that if they find a way to come together again they can fix anything. They might even be able to save magic.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love, Kudos are love! I hope everyone enjoyed!


End file.
